When I’m out of the house, I’m casing public locations for the nearest outlet. Like some “Last Gas for 200 miles” desperation, I need to make sure that my gear is fully powered. Lately, though, I don’t care. In fact, my bag has been feeling a LOT lighter. Probably because I’m not lugging around a power brick or some juice-guzzling laptop. I’m rocking the ENVY x2.

Now, when you hear "[Product X] gets a long battery life!", you might take it with a grain of salt. You know, tests under strict conditions in a clean room or with synthetic benchmarks. Last time I checked, I’m about 95-to-97 percent non-synthetic. How about you? SO, I decided to keep the stopwatch running as I chronicle a real day of me using the ENVY x2. The brightness will be set to 50 percent, the WiFi will be on and I will be using this how I normally would.

6:30am I’m browsing the Web and checking through the Twitter / Facebook feeds to see what I might’ve missed when I actually sleep.

7:00am Time to open up the email. In this case, Outlook 2013. I feel odd getting excited about a productivity suite, but I really am liking the new look and feel for latest 32-bit version of MS’ Office. It runs cleanly on the ENVY x2. Yes, yes, I know that free suites like LibreOffice exist.

7:15am Coffee gets injected into my brain as I fire up the MS Lync chat client and Word 2013. These are the three main apps that I live in for the day. One quick little tip for you guys: there’s the ability to flip on the ink mode in office. Pair that with a touchscreen and it’s awesome for quick-n-easy note-taking.

7:27am My first messages start coming in over the Lync client app. I’m coordinating on a couple stories for upcoming products (sorry, NO SPOILERS!). When I’m not jumping in-and-out of chats, I’m doing a little online research to see where HP is coming up in conversations online.

8:15am OK, Back to writing! Inside of Word 2013, I’m crafting the next masterpiece to appear on the blog (This story!) and fleshing out some other bits that will run later in the week.

10:47am A little over 2.5 hours where I’m able to write, undisturbed? CRAZINESS! Take a quick break for my hands and get ready for a round of phone meetings. This is probably a good opportunity to say

11:30am And by phone meetings, I mean they are all conducted on the ENVY x2 through the Lync App. So this isn’t just my laptop and tablet it’s also my “desk” phone, too!

12:30pm Time for lunch….and a battery reality check. I’m currently at about 50 percent. Meaning the battery built into the keyboard base is completely drained, but the battery in the tablet is fully charged. For lunch, I head out, grab a bite to eat and watch a streamed show. Star Trek: Enterprise. Don’t judge me.

Quick sidenote – the Hulu Plus and Netflix apps work great in Windows 8. And if you subscribe to both these services, I highly recommend that you also invest in a license for PlayLater. It lets you record streamed videos to watch ‘em later.

1:30pm As we roll into the afternoon, I go back to my ritual of checking forums, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and all things social like. That involves a couple apps, a couple Web browsers….and a lot of dumb links to random things that I find online.

1:53pm Time for a little additional research as I start to wind down my battery tests. Yep, time for games – the most notorious of the battery life killers (aside from watching video). So I start playing a couple new additions to the Windows 8 App store – Gunpowder is a fun little puzzle game. Pinball FX2 for a quick silver ball fix on the Avengers table. And a little turn-based strategy with Skulls of the Shogun. Then some decidedly non-Win 8 games. FTL.

(Those games were interrupted with the occasional work email.)

3:00pm Back to article writing and research for what’s happening in the world.

4:30pm OK, winding down a bit now. My brain has hit that wall and now, it’s time to continue tweeting and sharing my special brand of idiocy with the world.

All said and done, with my on-again, off-again day of testing, the ENVY x2 lasted north of 10 hours in my varied – and highly subjective --- stress tests. Obviously your results can (and will) vary, but what I came away with was a flexible device that I was able to push for most of my work day. Even when I wasn’t “technically” working.

Follow Darren’s continuing adventures with his ENVY x2 on the blog and @gizmogladstone on Twitter.

Fair enough question - I think that the Folio 13 has a strong battery life, but the Core processors demand more juice. So, my kneejerk answer would be that the x2 should last longer. Of course, I'm saying this while I haven't used a Folio in over a year. So take that speculation for what it is....